If you haven’t been watching this story over the weekend. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the “winner” over Mir Hossein Mousavi. People are demonstrating on the streets, and now there is a report that Mousavi was arrested.
Juan Cole, President of the Global Americana Institute, lists several pieces of evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election was stolen, but doesn’t seem to think that the government will change.
So, there are protests against an allegedly stolen election. The Basij paramilitary thugs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards will break some heads. Unless there has been a sea change in Iran, the theocrats may well get away with this soft coup for the moment. But the regime’s legitimacy will take a critical hit, and its ultimate demise may have been hastened, over the next decade or two.
Ironically the chant that you hear in the video below is not what we are normally used to hearing coming out of Iran. It isn’t “death to America” or “death to Israel,” but “death to the government.”
Will this current government survive (as Cole puts it, get away with a soft coup), and if they do remain in place what stance will the Obama administration have toward a government that remains in power by fraud?
Will definitely be interesting to see how this plays out.
Mega-Hat Tip: Memeorandum